Hello All,
I am happy to inform you that Shifting Sands is published. It is available for your purchase on Amazon. I also have a new web site. Stop on by and give it a look. Let me know what you think of it.
https://www.tlscottauthor.com
Here is the first chapter for your reading pleasure.
Chapter 1
“So, you’re not even going to talk to me,”
he asked, taking his eyes off the road long enough to look at her. She was as
far away from him as she could possibly be, her body turned, lodged up against
the passenger door, staring out at the dark snowy night. Her arms were tightly
crossed across her chest. Her face was hidden by her hair, a curtain providing
another layer from him. It hid the tears falling from her eyes. Her left leg
bounced up and down as she tapped her heel on the floorboard. Anger rolled off
her in waves.
“I didn’t do anything!” He shouted, slapping
the steering wheel. “You’ve got to believe me. I know it looked bad, but I’d
never do that to you, Stacy. I love you.”
“Stop the car, Steve,” she said, keeping her
voice at a reasonable tone.
“What?”
“I said, stop the car, Steve.”
“All right, I’ll shut up.”
“I said, stop the damn car, Steve! I don’t
want to be in here with you for another second.”
“It’s freezing,” he protested. “I’m not
going to let you walk home. Like I said, I’ll just shut up and drive you home.”
“Stop the fucking car,” she screamed,
turning to face him. “Stop it now or I swear I’ll fucking jump.” She shoved the
car door open, cold air rushed in, making her threat feel all the more real.
He didn’t know what shocked him more, her
cussing like that or the devastated look on her face. He had no choice. He hit
the brakes, hard. The tires lost their grip on the ice crusted snow-packed
road. Steve turned into the skid fighting to keep the car under control. He
managed to avoid going into the ditch. The tire came to rest against the snow
packed edge, just short of the four foot drop off.
As soon as the car stopped, Stacy jumped
out. She stormed off, not bothering to close the door.
Steve got out of the car. His foot slipped
on an icy spot. He grabbed onto the top of the door. He barely avoided falling
on the slippery road. “Shit!” he said, when his shin hit the bottom of the
door. He pulled himself up. “Come on, Stacy,” He yelled after her. He watched
as she kept walking away.
“Fuck! Fuck. Fuck,” he said, climbing back
into the car. He hit the gas to hard which only spun the tires. He took a deep
breath then slowly pressed down on the gas pedal to make the car creep back
from the shoulder. He carefully turned the car so that it was heading back into
town.
He followed behind her for about 10 minutes.
He was sure she’d calm down enough to get back in the car. When that didn’t
happen, he eased the car up alongside her. He rolled the passenger window down.
“Come on, Stacy,” he said in a reasonable tone of voice. “This is silly. Get
back in the car. I promise I won’t say another word.”
She tried to walk faster, her stride short
and choppy. The soles of her boots slipped with every step she took. They were
designed to look good, not to brave the harsh Iowa winters on a night-time
hike.
He dropped back and followed her for another
five minutes until he’d finally had enough. She obviously wasn’t going to
change her mind, no matter what he said. He pulled up next to her again. “Come
on Stacy. Just get in the car. I’ll just bring you home.” She didn’t even look
at him. “Last chance,” he warned her.
“I’d rather freeze to death than spend
another minute with you. Go ahead and go back to Julie,” she yelled at him.
“Fine then! Believe what you want. I don’t
give a shit,” he yelled at her. He gave it too much gas, causing the tires to
spin, pelting her with snow and ice as he fishtailed past her.
He’d gone about a quarter mile before he
looked back at her in the rearview mirror. He hoped she’d be waving her arms
for him to come back, she wasn’t. He considered stopping the car and waiting
for her. Maybe she would have cooled off by then. He didn’t. He went home. He
thought about calling her. He didn’t. He stayed up taking out his frustrations
on the video game. The simulated explosions and killing did nothing for his
anger. He checked his phone for the hundredth time. No message. No missed call.
Nothing. Eventually he went to bed.
The sound of his ringtone woke him. Reaching
for the phone, he clumsily knocked it off the nightstand. The display read
12:37 a. m. and Stacy Home. He answered it. “So you finally…” He stopped
talking when he realized he was talking over her dad’s voice. “I’m sorry,
what?”
“Where is she, Steve?”
“She’s not home?” he said, sitting up. “I
dropped her off hours ago.”
“Where? You brought her home?” Stacy’s dad
asked, obviously confused. “She never came home, Steve. Where’d you drop her
off at? We’ve been calling her phone, but she doesn’t answer.”
By the time Steve finished telling Mr. Weber
about where and why he left his only daughter, his parents had joined him in
his room. The call was put on speakerphone, and both sets of parents agreed it
was best to call the police. The father’s decided to drive around looking for
her. Steve went with his dad and showed him where Stacy got out of his car.
The police were already there, the red and
blue lights from their cars, strobing out into the dark. Almost four hours had
passed since Steve last saw her in his rearview mirror, head down, feet slipping
on the snow-packed road. In that time, the snow had continued to fall. It was
enough to cover her purse that had been thrown into the ditch, her phone,
money, and everything else still inside. It was the only thing they found.
“Okay, let’s go over this one more time,”
said the nicer of the two uniformed officers questioning Steve. “You were at a
friend’s house, Julie Adams, right?”
Steve kept his eyes focused on her name tag,
Baker. “I already told you that. I’ve told you everything,” he said with a
tired sigh. They’d been at this for a long time. Steve didn’t know how long but
it didn’t really matter. He was exhausted. The reality that Stacy was gone was
smothering him. It was his fault. He shouldn’t have left her. If he’d just kept
following her instead of taking off, she’d be home now. She’d be safe.
“Uh-huh, so you were at Ms. Adam's house
with Stacy when you two had an argument,” Baker said, reading from her notes.
“Yeah, then we left. She was mad. She got
out of the car, and I went home,” said Steve.
“Uh-huh,” Baker said again. “And what time
was that?”
“About nine or so,” he told her.
“Uh-huh.” She wrote some more notes down
before looking up at him. “And then what?”
“What?” Steve asked, raising his bloodshot
eyes up to meet hers.
“And then what happened? You left your
girlfriend on the side of the road, at night, in the middle of a snowstorm. The
temperature was what, 10, 12 degrees?” Baker looked over to her partner. His
name was Davis.
“Sounds about right,” Davis agreed, in a
voice that sounded anything but agreeable.
“So, what happened then, Steve? Did you
really go home, or did you go someplace else,” asked Baker?
“I went straight home,” said Steve.
“Are you sure? I mean, you must have been
pretty upset. You were so angry you just left her. Maybe you went someplace to
cool off,” asked Baker?
Steve shook his head. “No, I just went
home.”
“You didn’t stop somewhere along the way?”
She asked again.
“I already told you. I went straight home.
Did somebody tell you something else,” Steve asked?
“Who would say something like that, Steve?
Did somebody see you?” she asked sweetly.
“Nobody. I told you, I didn’t go anywhere.
Ask my dad. He was watching the game when I got home. I made a sandwich, then I
went up to my room. I played Call of Duty until I went to sleep,” he said.
Officer Baker nodded her head and wrote some
more on her legal pad. “Okay, did you call her? You know, to see if she was,
okay? Maybe to apologize for making her walk home?”
“I told you, I didn’t kick her out. She’s
the one that demanded I let her out. She was going to jump out of the car. I
had no choice.” He didn’t like the way his voice cracked. He cleared his throat
and sat up straighter in the cold metal chair.
“Oh, so you’re the victim here,” demanded
Davis.
“What? No. I’m just saying that I didn’t
make her walk. She was mad,” said Steve defensively.
“Yeah, about that, what was it you said you
guys were fighting about,” asked Baker.
“That’s none of your business,” he said.
Davis had had enough. He crossed the room
and slapped his hand down on the table. “Your girlfriend is missing. She was
last seen walking alone on the side of the road during a snowstorm, the
temperatures dropping to the single digits. You,” he said, pointing his thick
finger at Steve’s face, “were the last person to see her. You, her boyfriend,
left her all alone and nobody has seen or heard from her since then. It most
definitely is our business. It’s our business to find her, you know, that whole
to serve and protect thing? So why don’t we just cut the shit, and you tell us
where she is?”
“That’s when it sunk in. He was the last
person to see Stacy. She wasn’t at one of her friends. She wasn’t hiding out
somewhere she didn’t want him to find her. She was missing. Something terrible
happened to her, and it was his fault. He left her there.
“Oh, I see our tough guy has finally figured
out how much shit he’s in. Good, now maybe we can finally hear the truth. Why
don’t we start with when Stacy walked in on you kissing Julie Adams?” A smile
curled Davis’s upper lip. “Oh yeah, Mr. Smart Guy. We’re real cops. Real cops
that know how to conduct an investigation. It’s our job to get to the truth, so
let’s get there.”
Steve told them basically the same story
again, only adding what happened at the party. Stacy had walked in and seen him
kissing Julie. That was what the fight had been about. Stacy stormed out of the
house and started walking home by herself. He’d talked her into letting him
drive her home.
There were leads the police followed,
hundreds of them which led nowhere. Reports of sightings continued to come in
over the ensuing week’s then month’s that followed. Sightings from as far away
as Ohio, Florida, and several from Nevada. None of them turned into anything
solid. The police kept the pressure on Steve off and on. His story never
changed. His dad had told the same story to the officer he’d been teamed up
with while they drove around looking for her in the early hours of that first
day of her disappearance.
Months passed with no progress. Stacy had
vanished. Winter slowly released its grip and gave way to spring. On a bright
sunny day, about forty feet from where her purse had been found, the ice and
snow gave up their grip on a gold bracelet with half of a heart attached to it.
I love you was inscribed on the back of the heart with Steve under it. The
bracelet, like the sweet young girl that had felt so loved when she’d been
given it, was swept away without anyone as a witness.
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